


The Burn of Memory

by dragonspell



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Molestation, Past Sexual Abuse, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 06:30:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9166168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonspell/pseuds/dragonspell
Summary: Leonard wakes up cuffed to a bed on Chronos's ship.  Yeah, Leonard’s already not a fan of any of this.(Slight spoilers for 1.09.  Canon-divergence.  Tagged as non-con/rape as a trigger-warning).





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has a bit of a different take on Chronos, playing him as more mind-wiped than the original on the show.

Leonard’s head hurts. It’s the first thing he notices as his swims back through the waters of unconsciousness into the waking world. Fuck, it hurts. He wonders if he hit it going down, if it’s what’s responsible for making him black out. Fragments of memories float through his mind and he grabs at them as his eyes flutter open.

The second thing that he notices is that his hands are bound. That…is not good. Leonard tests the bindings, yanking on them but his arms stay above his head and the cuffs encircling his wrists stay maddeningly tight, rattling against the metal bar that they’re attached to. Not fucking good. His heart speeds up in his chest but he forces the panic back down. Okay, so his head hurts and he’s tied up.

It’s happened before. He can deal with it. It’s not like he’s had a particularly _sheltered_ life. And, yeah, so, cuffs can mean that he’s trapped which means that there’s no place to go which means that he’s dead or worse than dead—He’s fine. He’s really fine.

Leonard sits up, feeling entirely too vulnerable laying on his back. He settles into a corner, putting his back to the wall and focuses on breathing. He’s on a bed. It’s comfortable and clean with a pillow and a blanket, but he doesn’t like the implications. He still has his clothes, however, so he’ll mark it down as possibly a plus. Better than waking up on the floor. Also, he’s not behind bars, which is a plus too. It’s not enough to cancel out the cuffs but Leonard will take what he can get. He swallows.

The settings are vaguely familiar. Gunmetal gray walls and the Waverider’s futuristic doors but this isn’t the Waverider. Leonard’s been in and out of every room on the Waverider, mapping his surroundings in his free time and though this room has the same trappings as Rip’s timeship, it’s not the same. He turns and looks behind him, finding a holoscreen broadcasting a sunrise.

The memories finally come back. He remembers fighting, ducking behind the chairs of the flight deck and shooting back. He remembers the sound his gun had made as it had coated the Waverider in ice but done absolutely nothing to the invader—to _Chronos_. Fuck, Leonard thinks. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He’s been _taken_.

This has to be _Chronos’s ship_. For whatever reason, he’s aboard Chronos’s ship heading God knows where. Cuffed to a bed in a strange bedroom. Yeah, Leonard’s already not a fan of any of this. He shakes the cuffs. 

They’re future tech, too. The cuffs are thick, much thicker than he’s used to, though he pulls on them just the same, hoping that they might give—or perhaps the bar that they’re attached to. Neither give an inch.

Leonard closes his eyes. For the moment, he’s going nowhere, but that can change. He knows how quickly that can change. One slip up and Leonard can have the key or the code or whatever the fuck it is that gets the cuffs off of him or maybe he can talk his way out or fucking _something_. He takes a shaky breath and slumps back into the corner.

As if Leonard’s shaking of the cuffs were a bell to summon him, Chronos in all of his Boba Fett, tin-canned, Terminator glory comes marching into the room. Leonard shrinks back, looking to make himself as small as possible. He knows that it doesn’t make much of a difference, but it’s an instinct that he can’t fight. _Non-threatening_ , he tries to project. _Don’t think of the way that I tried to shoot you when I had my gun or how I wouldn’t hesitate if I had it now._

Chronos ignores him, crossing the room without even looking at Leonard. He grabs a tablet off the table next to the bed and heads back out. Leonard stares at him. “Hello?” Leonard tries, his mouth and pride overriding his good sense. Chronos leaves and Leonard’s alone in the room again. _What the hell?_

It’s not that he particularly wants the man to pay attention to him, but it’s going to be awfully damn hard to escape if he’s left completely alone. Leonard tries the cuffs again.

Still nothing.

Cuffs 4, Snart 0.

* * *

The holoscreen seems to be set on a specific pattern, cycling through a sunrise, a star in space, a crackling flame and, discordantly, the slow melt of an ice cube on a counter. Each image stays up for about ten minutes before switching to the next. Leonard watches them through twice before turning his attention elsewhere. 

Not that there is anywhere else to look, really. The room is meticulous in its item placement. There’s the bed, looking like every other timeship bunk that Leonard’s ever seen, the now empty nightstand since Chronos reclaimed his whatever it was, and a table and chairs in the far corner. There’s none of the random boxes and storage items laying around like there is on the Waverider and Leonard idly wonders if that’s by Chronos’s choice or if the Waverider’s state of disarray is due to how Rip regained possession of it. Either way, there’s not a whole lot that can help him—no objects to hoard for potential usefulness, no personal items to find a way into Chronos’s head, just nothing but an empty room and a repeating holoscreen.

Further inspection of the cuffs had proven similarly useless. Leonard has no idea how they work. He can’t even seem to find a damn seam. It’s like they had bonded around his wrists with no way of ever being separated again. He can’t find a latch or a lock.

“Is this it?” Leonard yells at the room. The Waverider has an intercom. Chances are good that this ship does, too. “Is this all you’ve got? You take me to do what, die of boredom?”

He rattles his cuffs but despite the fact that they’d called Chronos earlier, they only seem to punctuate Leonard’s frustration now. Eventually, he sighs and settles back against his chosen corner. “Gideon?” he tries. No dice. The ship doesn’t answer.

Either it doesn’t have an AI, which Leonard doesn’t believe for a second, or it’s been told not to talk to him. Or possibly that its name isn’t Gideon and it’s refusing to answer. “Ship?”

Worth a try.

The door opens and Leonard sits back up as Chronos clanks back into the room. This time Leonard doesn’t shrink away, but broadens his shoulders and stares directly at the bounty hunter. At least until Chronos comes right for him. “Hello again,” Leonard says, spite forcing the words out of his mouth. Chronos walks up to Leonard’s borrowed bed, the black eyes of his alien-looking armor focused directly on Leonard and Leonard curls his legs back toward himself, protecting his middle. It’s a bad move, but he really doesn’t have anything else. There’s nowhere for Leonard to go. He’s trapped in the corner with his captor only a few feet away from him. He hunches his shoulders. “Strong silent type, huh?” Leonard spits out.

Chronos’s hand seizes Leonard’s ankle. Leonard attempts to jerk away from the touch, but the bounty hunter holds him firm. 

Leonard takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, controlling the panic and anger that skirts along the outside of his mind. _This is fine_ , he thinks. He is fine. He can still gain control of this situation. Diversion, he thinks. Anything to put this situation off its track and onto another because Leonard doesn’t think that he likes where this is going. “Back on the Waverider, you could have taken anybody.” Hell, he could have killed them all and taken _no one_. “Like your boy Rip.”

Chronos slides his other hand up Leonard’s captured leg, his gloved palm pressing against Leonard’s calf— _Leonard takes another breath_ —his knee— _he lets it out slowly_ —his thigh. Leonard’s next breath stutters. He closes Chronos out for a second, digs down for the cold ice that his father had so helpfully installed in him, and coats his expression with it. At least the son of a bitch had been good for something. “So why take me?” His voice’s breathier than he’d like but it’s the best he’s got right now. Chronos drags his thumb over Leonard’s inner thigh, seemingly mesmerized by how his glove looks against Leonard’s jeans. Over and over and minutes tick by. Leonard feels his ice start to crack. _He’s_ going to crack if he allows this to go on much longer. “What’s so special about me? Besides my sparkling personality?” And his apparently alluring thighs. Leonard bites back an absurd urge to laugh.

Chronos still doesn’t answer. He’s completely down the rabbit hole. Leonard tries to pull his leg back again, tugging hard, but Chronos’s grip is worse than the cuffs. He can’t budge it. So Leonard tries the other direction. He swallows down his pride and spreads his legs just enough to seem encouraging but not too blatant about it. Chronos can go a little higher if that’s what it takes. It’s nothing that Leonard hasn’t done before. He’s played this game. He’s never liked it, but he’s good at it. 

“Whore,” Chronos snaps and yanks his hand back. He reels it back and slaps Leonard across the face, metal covering cutting Leonard’s cheek and slamming him into the wall. Leonard freezes against the wall, his mind spinning the puzzle around and around in his head and coming up with a whole lot of nothing. Chronos finally gives Leonard his leg back and, driven by instinct, Leonard brings it up as close as he can. 

Behind him, Chronos rattles around the room and, against his better judgment, Leonard dares a peek. The bounty hunter stands at a hidden panel, looking inside at items that Leonard can’t catch a glimpse of. Leonard ducks away when Chronos turns around, not wanting to be caught staring. He tries to calm his heartbeat, but it’s a useless effort as Chronos moves back towards him. His heart pounds away in his chest, quick as a rabbit, even as Leonard keeps himself dead still. Chronos evidently doesn’t want his willful participation in any molestation and there’s nothing that Leonard can do right now but accept it or fight back.

One that he learned from his father above all others is that fighting back is only for when you have an advantage. And right now, Leonard has nothing.

The bed dips behind Leonard and an armored hand clamps onto his shoulder. He flinches away before he can control the reaction, then steels himself. Acting like prey only makes the predators hungry. He goes easily when Chronos turns him, rolling onto his back. His skin attempts to crawl away as he looks up at Chronos’s bug eyed helmet.

Leonard wonders how much of the man is human. If he even _is_ human. Chronos strips off his gloves and tosses them onto the table. There’s a brief moment where Leonard feels a surge of hope, thinking of the gloves of Raymond’s suit, chock full of little missiles and lasers, but following close on its heels is the depressing realization that he wouldn’t know how to work them if they were. Still. The thought is there. He’s thankful to note that Chronos’s hands seem human enough when they press along his skin, sliding over his jaw to the cut that the metal made on his cheek. 

Leonard looks away, unable to keep eye contact as Chronos examines the damage to his newest catch, fingers turning Leonard’s chin this way and that until he’s appeased. Slick grease slides along the wound on his cheek and Leonard’s eyes dart back to Chronos as pain and fear mix together inside him. The bounty hunter dabs another bit onto Leonard and then grunts in satisfaction. Chronos turns away, closing up the salve, apparently satisfied that he’s treated the wound that he gave Leonard. _Repaired the damage_ , Leonard thinks. 

A ghostly “Just don’t hit him in the face” echoes through Leonard’s mind and he suppresses a shudder. It’s been a long time since he’s thought of those words, what they always meant was coming. He doesn’t want to relive them.

When Chronos comes back, it’s with one of the bars that Gideon and Rip are always pretending is food. He holds it out to Leonard, still wrapped, and, yeah, that’s a definite no. Not only does he know that the protein bar has all of the appeal of dusty cardboard, but there is no way that he is, one, accepting any of Chronos’s “gifts” and, two, eating with his hands still cuffed to the wall. “Pass,” he says when Chronos pushes the bar at him again. The bar lands against Leonard’s knee and slides off onto the bed. Leonard shifts away, putting a little distance between him and it.

Chronos is seemingly indifferent to whether Leonard chooses to eat or not, leaving Leonard alone to go putter among his secret panels again. It’s a different one this time, on another wall, and Leonard wonders if the entire room is nothing but hidden panels waiting to be opened. This one slides out and stands about as tall as Chronos himself, with hooks and straps. Chronos has already placed his gloves on a holder and Leonard assumes that the rest of his armor fits on the rack as well.

Leonard knows that he should probably keep his mouth shut. It would be the smart thing to do. He just can’t do it, though, not with Chronos on the other side of the room and the cut he’d given Leonard already numb. “This is nice and all,” Leonard drawls, “you with the not talking, me with the cuffs. I’m sure it’s a great time. Our relationship is just really taking off.” So far, Chronos has spoken one word to Leonard since taking him from the Waverider and, while Leonard isn’t much for chatterboxes, the silence is starting to get to him. Chronos turns to look at him, alien-bug eyes reflecting a bit of the overhead light, and Leonard doesn’t know if it was something that he said or just Chronos deciding on his own. Either way, he continues. “I mean, so far, the only conversation that we’ve had is me talking at you and you calling me a whore, so, yeah, all and all, it’s a great start.”

“There is nothing to talk about,” Chronos replies, his voice filtering through the helmet. Leonard’s heart jumps as something akin to fear tingles along his skin. He forces a smile.

“Sure there is.” Leonard glances around the room at its sterile cleanliness. The entire place feels like it is nothing more than a metal box—which, Leonard supposes, that’s exactly what it is. “We could talk about your interior decorating choices. Or the fact that you’ve apparently taken Bobba Fett to be your role model in life.” His smile morphs into a smirk as he eyes Chronos’s suit. As hideous and seemingly impractical as it looks, he really hopes that it has a wealth of hidden little features. “We could talk about the goddamned weather. Looks black and starry which a chance of meteors.”

“All of which is meaningless.” Leonard’s got an acidic reply burning on his tongue, but Chronos takes that moment to take off his helmet and anything that Leonard had been thinking about saying dies before he can speak it. Everything except for…

“Mick?” The bottom drops out of Leonard’s stomach. Somehow, he’s spinning, despite the fact that he’s sitting still because those are Mick’s eyes looking at him, and Mick’s nose, Mick’s frown, Mick’s clenched jaw, and what the _fuck_ is happening? It’s impossible, because Mick is supposed to be safe, quietly stored away in the future until Leonard can come get him in a little while. He planned to have no time pass at all, just drop in and pick up Mick from where he was still unconscious where Leonard last left him. That was the idea. But yet here Mick is, in front of him, in Time Master armor, following orders and has been for weeks now. Mick is supposed to be _safe_. Questions collide in Leonard’s head, piling up in a messy wreck and he picks one at random. “ _How?_ ”

Chronos places his helmet in the panel, still silent, and useless rage, fueled by frustration, bubbles up inside of Leonard. He goes with it because it’s better than the equally useless tears that are threatening as well. “You’d better tell me what the _hell_ is going on!” He rattles the cuffs, clanking them against the bar again. “Mick, goddamn it!”

“I am not Mick,” Chronos says calmly in Mick’s voice.

Leonard looks him over again and sees Mick’s shoulders in Chronos’s tin can suit, sees the curve of Mick’s back. “Don’t _fuck_ with me,” Leonard snarls. “You’re Mick Rory. Now what the fuck are you doing here?” Had the Time Masters been tracking them? Picked Mick up as soon as the Waverider had left? And, Mick’s been tracking them for weeks! They’ve been fighting against him. _Mick_ has been fighting against him—against himself and how was this even fucking possible?

The ramifications of time travel come back around to brutally slam into Leonard. _God_. What if a second was all that it took to lose _years_? How long? How long had Mick been the Time Masters’ play thing?

Chronos leaves the panel, suit still on, and approaches Leonard again. Mick’s face and Chronos’s suit refuse to mesh in Leonard’s mind. He shrinks back against the wall. “Mick,” he says and hates how small his voice sounds. “What did they do to you?” Chronos reaches for him with Mick’s hand—now that Leonard knows, there’s no mistaking it—and slides a finger along Leonard’s cheek. Its familiarity combined with Mick’s eyes looking at him cause hope to bloom inside of Leonard and he tips himself into Mick’s warmth like a flower towards the sun. He’ll get out of this. He’ll get himself and Mick out of this and they’ll go blow the Time Masters all to hell for daring to think that they could get away with this. Mick will be back where he belongs and everything will be just like it’s supposed to be.

“Mick Rory is dead.”

A tremor ripples along Leonard’s arms. He clenches his fists to stop it. Cloning is a possibility that he hadn’t considered. What if the Time Masters had cloned Mick and then killed him? Then this person in front of Leonard with Mick’s face wouldn’t really be Mick.

Leonard doesn’t know if he’d be able to handle that.

Chronos tilts his head to frown at the wall, brow furled like he’s trying to figure out a puzzle, then he comes back to Leonard. It’s a look that Leonard has seen thousands of times over the years—Mick pulling apart machinery to put it back together better, Mick verbally sparing with Leonard, Mick being Mick. The possibility of this being a clone in front of him gets tossed up on a shelf and locked away. No, Leonard thinks, this is Mick. This is definitely Mick. “You’re Mick Rory,” he says. “You’ve been my partner for thirty years.” 

“I have no partner,” Chronos replies tonelessly. “I work alone.” 

“Mick…” 

Chronos’s hand closes around Leonard’s throat and tightens, cutting off his air. Panic floods through Leonard and he flails, lashing out at Chronos’s arms before trying to pull the tight grip away from his throat. He gets a few fingers underneath Chronos’s and manages to gain a few gulps of air. “Your mind games are not going to work, Leonard Snart,” Chronos says. “I have read your file.” 

“If you’ve read my file,” Len gasps, fighting through the breathlessness that wants him to stop talking, “then you know that I work with a man named Mick Rory. And he looks just like you—” Chronos tightens his hold, cutting Leonard off. The edges of Leonard’s vision start to fade. He can feel himself blacking out, can feel his life slipping away. He can’t manage to loosen Chronos’s grip and he’s getting weaker. He struggles, legs lashing out to kick at Chronos’s side, only to rebound off the armor. Leonard can’t die like this. He can’t. Who would take care of Lisa? Who would save Mick? Leonard can’t leave them alone. 

But he has no choice in the matter. His fingers go slack, his limbs heavy, and unconsciousness awaits him.

Lips press against his, rough and blundering, like a teenager’s first kiss, overeager and inexperienced. The hand at his throat loosens and Leonard greedily sucks at the air that’s now available to him, inhaling around the lips that are shoving themselves against his mouth. Each breath he takes burns like fire.

His eyes flutter open, blurring on Mick’s face before he closes them again. Taking a deep breath through his nose, he fills his lungs again, and then slowly starts to respond. Chronos’s kiss isn’t like Mick’s. It’s too rough, too open, teeth and spit and invading tongue all coming together like a stranger’s touch, but there’s something underneath it all that makes Leonard shiver, something familiar. He keeps his lips gentle and welcoming, urging Chronos to do the same, urging him to be Mick and not what the Time Masters have turned him into. The cuffs bang against the wall.

Chronos breaks away. Leonard pants, worn out and breathless, but he notes with satisfaction that Chronos isn’t unaffected. His mouth is open and if it weren’t for the armor, Leonard would bet that he’d be able to see the rise and fall of Mick’s heaving chest. His eyes stay on Leonard’s face, dropping down to Leonard’s lips like he wants to go again but something is holding him back. Leonard flicks his tongue out and Chronos tracks the movement. Then his eyes drop lower, down to Leonard’s neck and beyond.

Silently, Chronos gets up and heads to the door. “Mick!” Leonard calls after him. Chronos stops.

“Mick Rory is dead,” he says, but he sounds less sure of it than before. His voice wavers.

“You’re Mick Rory,” Leonard says to Chronos’s back.

Chronos snaps around. “Mick Rory died in a temporal time pocket, left there by a man he trusted.” It has all the subtlety of a semi, and there’s nothing that Leonard can do but accept the words that Chronos hurls at him. Yes. He did that. He left Mick there, in that forest. He’d be planning to go back, counting on it, but there’s no denying that he left Mick there in the first place—and that apparently, despite all of his plans, he never made it back and is never going to.

Leonard left him and the Time Masters found him, so now all there is left of Mick is what’s in front of Leonard. Leonard swallows and looks away. He wants a do-over but that’s not how life works—even with time travel.

“He _died_ ,” Chronos continues. “And Chronos was born.”

There’s still so many things missing from the story, so many things that Leonard needs to know to even have a hope of making this right. “The Time Masters…” he says softly.

“Created me,” Chronos interrupts. “Gave me a purpose.”

“Mick, I…”

Chronos strides back to the bed, legs eating up the distance between them in a matter of seconds, and looms over Leonard. “And yet here you are,” he snarls. “Why are you here?” He tosses it out like it was Leonard’s choice to board his ship, like Leonard had come on his own and Chronos had found him stowed away.

 _What?_ Leonard stares up at Chronos, at Mick, and his mouth opens to say words that he doesn’t have. It works soundlessly as he tries to think of what to say and comes up with nothing. Chronos glares down at him. “You live in my thoughts. Make me think things I shouldn’t. Make me _do_ things I shouldn’t.” He growls and grabs Leonard again, pinning him against the wall. A moment of panic seizes Leonard. He pulls on the cuffs, fighting to get free despite knowing that it’s useless, and a small, weak whine escapes from him before he can stop it. Chronos could kill him right now and there would be nothing that Leonard could do to stop him. Leonard would die, somewhere in time, somewhere in space, and no one would know except for the man that the Time Masters created from the remains of Mick Rory. 

Chronos’s lips once again claim Leonard’s. He’s learned something from the last time, the kiss being a little less sloppy, having a little more finesse, but it’s just as rough as before. Driven by anger and frustration, the kiss turns even rougher, with Chronos biting at Leonard’s bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. Leonard flinches from the pain and tries to move away but Chronos holds him fast. There’s no place to go, with the wall at Leonard’s back and Chronos’s solid armor in front of him. Leonard turns his head away to break away from the kiss, if only momentarily. He tilts his head down and tries to keep it flush against the wall. 

His unwillingness to participate doesn’t stop Chronos. Instead, Chronos mouths over Leonard’s jaw and neck, leaving marks along his skin as he bites down and sucks, bringing pain and unwanted arousal at the same time. The cuffs rattle and Leonard’s wrists ache as he tries to wrench himself free. Chronos’s hands push underneath Leonard’s jacket, fingers running over Leonard’s body like they own him and Leonard feels his stomach churn, bile rising in the back of his throat. 

He’s back to being sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Back to being handed over as a payment for services rendered and damn how he feels about it ( _“Don’t be a pussy. Just suck it up.”_ ). Back to needing to do ‘special favors’ to prove his usefulness because no one wants to take a chance on him but they like his face. Back to fighting his way through juvie and prison. Back to before he learned how to wield a reputation like a weapon, shoot first before someone shoots you. Back to before he found Mick and learned that he didn’t have to do what he didn’t want to.

Chronos’s hands—Chronos, not Mick, no matter what Leonard tries to tell himself—push his legs apart again, forcefully sliding between them. Hard metal grinds against Leonard’s cock. “Stop,” Leonard says. “Stop.” It’s an order that’s only one step removed from begging but Leonard can’t find it in himself to care because in this moment, he would beg if it would make it stop. 

Leonard’s not expecting it to work. 

When Chronos pulls away, Leonard’s brain has a hard time processing it. _(They never stop when you ask them to; they always, always keep going, taking what they want—)_ He stays flat against the wall for a few moments after Chronos lets him go, mind convinced that it’s merely a trick and that he’s still trapped. It isn’t until he feels Chronos’s weight leave the bed that he dares to move, a slow slide down the wall and curling in on himself to make himself small.

Something clangs in the room, metal against metal, and Leonard opens his eyes to see Chronos with his arm against the wall, armor scraping over the metal alloy as he turns and reclaims his helmet and gloves from the panel. Chronos jerks each glove on roughly and jams the helmet on his head, then strides out of the room.

This time, Leonard lets him go without a word.

* * *

Leonard stares at the holoscreen, watching it change from a burning star into a raging flame. Now that he knows Chronos’s real identity, the holoscreen fills him with a sense of peace because it tells him that Mick is rattling around in that tin can somewhere. The Time Masters might have fucked with his mind, but Mick’s still picking out things from his past and that means something. Leonard’s got the proof of Mick’s pyromania looking him in the face.

He’s also willing to bet that, for whatever reason, that’s why he’s here, too. On the bridge, when he and Rip had tried to fight Chronos off, Chronos must have recognized him— _Mick_ must have recognized him—and instead of killing him, had decided to drag him back to the ship. It’s one bright spot among the shit he’s found himself in. 

Of course, there’s a whole host of problems that comes along with that, though, too. So far, Chronos hasn’t killed Leonard, or even seriously injured him, but there’s no denying the fact that he doesn’t like Leonard being here. There’s something holding him back and he doesn’t like it, which makes him even more dangerous. Underneath, Mick might not want to hurt Leonard, but there’s a whole lot of potential damage sitting between Leonard and unconscious intentions.

Leonard’s never been afraid of Mick, not even during some of the knock-down, drag ‘em out fights that they’ve had in the past, but he thinks that he might be just a little scared of this version of Mick. Leonard can’t predict him. That makes him terrifying. The Mick that ran shouting back into the burning building, laughing at the rising flames, was more stable, more predictable than the Mick that’s haunting Chronos’s armor.

Leonard doesn’t know what happened to the others, either, and that’s sitting there in his mind, eating away at him, too. He’s found Mick, but, God, what about Sara and Jax and Kendra? Ray, Stein, and Rip? Were they dead now? Sara and Kendra and Ray hadn’t even been on the ship when it had taken off. Were they stuck in the late fifties, living out their lives long before a time-traveling cowboy would come pick them up in 2016? Sara deserves better, but she’ll adapt. She’s a survivor. Leonard likes that about her. Kendra, though. There were much better times for a girl like her to be living in than 1958. And Raymond must be going out of his mind dealing with the primitive technology of the time. 

That is, if Chronos hadn’t killed them back in 1958.

Leonard hopes that Jax and Stein managed to escape, though the pessimist in him knows better than to do so. Rip was likely a goner. He’d been on the bridge with Leonard when Chronos had attacked and there wasn’t any reason why Chronos, supposedly one of the Time Masters’ best operatives, would leave his mark still breathing.

Rip had had his faults, but he hadn’t been a bad guy. It’s one more death to put squarely on the Time Masters. Mick had merely been the tool; it wasn’t his fault and Leonard wasn’t going to think for a second that it was.

God, Mick. What had they _done_ to him? In a way, it’s like the Time Masters had removed half of his brain—scrambled it, fried it up and put back only a few pieces glued together with cheap dogma. Leonard has to believe that it’s Mick keeping him on this ship, that it’s Mick that keeps surfacing under Chronos’s façade, because otherwise the guilt is going to eat him alive. He’s the one who left Mick for the Time Masters to find. It hadn’t been his intention, but that’s what had happened, and he might as well have left him on a silver platter with an engraved invitation.

Everything was wrong. _Fucked up_. It was never supposed to be this way. It had always been him and Mick and Lisa against the world. And now here Leonard was sitting with Lisa God knew how many miles and years away and Mick mentally no closer despite being within yards physically. It’s Leonard’s fault. He’s the one that makes the plans and the plan this time was complete shit. He’d rushed in, trying to be something that he wasn’t, confused by pretty words from a pretty boy who believed in him for no reason at all. He hadn’t considered all of the angles, hadn’t thought everything through the way that he should have. Mick hadn’t even wanted to come along. If Leonard hadn’t talked him into it, then would still be living out their lives with Lisa back in 2016, not stationed in some freaky time distortion in space, sought after by faceless, power-hungry assholes.

Leonard kicks the wall. He wants to blame this on something, anything, but he knows that it’s all on him. In the end, it comes down to him and his own desires and weaknesses.

The burning flame on the holoscreen slides into the slowly melting ice cube and Leonard feels another part of him splinter and break. There’s no mystery about why Mick picked the picture, even if he hadn’t been aware of it, hidden deep within the Chronos persona that the Time Masters had layered on top of his psyche. Water drips from the ice and slides across the counter to disappear off screen, slow and steady. Given time, it will transition not into nothingness but into a brilliant, fiery sunset. Him and Mick, together, each one picking up where the other leaves off and that’s all there is to it.

It’s been hours since Chronos had left. After the first, Leonard had stopped actively wishing for Chronos/Mick to stay away and had moved on from there, each passing minute getting him closer and closer to the point where he’s now trying to will the door to open with the power of positive thinking. He can’t save Mick if Mick refuses to be around him.

And he’s had to pee for the last two hours. He settles and resettles on the bed, each new position giving him a few minutes of relief until the need finds him again. There’s also the beginning of hunger, which means that he’s probably been on board Chronos’s ship longer than he’d originally thought. There’s no way of telling how long he was out for when Chronos first brought him on, but it usually takes Leonard quite awhile to feel actually hungry, so he’d guess a rough three to four hours on the conservative side. Most likely longer. 

There’s also the fact that the residue from the battle is now stiff along his jeans. The cold gun is a wonder of modern technology, a testament to Cisco’s genius, but it is not without its drawbacks. The reaction that turns the temperature to absolute zero around the barrel of the gun messes with other particles than just the air. Leonard often finds his clothes freeze-dried around his skin if he’s not careful. The parka always protected him, same with the replacement jacket Gideon had made for him. Now, he just wants to change—possibly with a shower first if he can get it. Warmth to replace the heat that the gun leeched from him.

To replace the heat that he’s missing from Mick.

Leonard closes his eyes. He’d been so stupid, so damn naive, to think that everything would go the way that he wanted, that time travel meant that he could safely leave Mick with no time lost at all. He should have fucking _known_ better, should have insisted on keeping Mick aboard the Waverider, Rip’s protests to the contrary be damned. Sara would have backed him up. She wouldn’t have been happy about it, but she hadn’t wanted to leave Mick in that forest anyway. She’d been angry with him for doing it, even though she accurately guessed that he hadn’t gone through with the original plan.

Hell, Raymond, too. Raymond, so desperate to be a hero, to do the right thing, would have staunchly stood on the side of locking Mick up like a proper criminal rather than abandoning him to his fate, or giving in to capital punishment.

All of them. Absolutely all of them would have supported Leonard had he wanted them too. He could have locked Mick in his own room, if anything, but he hadn’t. No, because they had a _time ship_ and Leonard could just safely put Mick into storage with Mick having no clue how much time had passed and wouldn’t that just be perfect seeing as how Leonard didn’t have the guts to put down a rabid dog like he should have. Like Rip fucking Hunter wanted him to. Mick wasn’t a dog, he wasn’t rabid, and Leonard couldn’t live without him.

Leonard hasn’t been a child in a long fucking time, having had it ripped away from him the first time his father ever put a gun in his hands and told him to use it if it came to that, but for some reason, he still seemed to want to believe in fairy tales. The Time Masters had scooped Mick up like trash and brainwashed him into being their puppet. Leonard had never made it back for Mick and Leonard is a piece of shit.

He’s always known that he’s garbage, but, Christ, he’d never guessed that he could sink to a level beneath that.

Leonard’s heart jumps into his throat and stays there when the door opens again. Chronos clanks back into the room, heading for yet another hidden panel. Words hover on the edge of Leonard’s tongue but his courage fails. There’s no telling what he would be inviting by gaining Chronos’s attention. If his interactions with Mick since his brainwashing are any indication, the Time Masters have made him infinitely unstable. Or, the Time Masters’ programming mixed with the real Mick underneath, either way, it works out to about the same for Leonard. 

Chronos pulls out a chain of metal spheres and, one-by-one, starts clicking them into an empty socket on his armor’s bracer. They slip in and disappear beneath the black join work. They’re followed by a rectangular cartridge that snaps in on top of them before Chronos turns to the other arm and repeats the process. When he’s done, his alien bug-eyed helmet swings over to Leonard, evidently expecting Leonard to try something, but Leonard keeps his eyes lowered. The metal boots clang on the floor as Chronos shifts.

Leonard jumps at the sound of screeching metal, heart thudding painfully as Chronos jams his fist against the wall repeatedly. The wall stoically bares it but Leonard has the suspicion that his body wouldn’t have lasted past two hits. He keeps himself still.

The alien helmet comes off, revealing Mick’s face once again and now that it’s gone, Leonard can hear Mick muttering to himself under his breath. The helmet slams down onto a hook, rocking wildly before stabilizers jab into it. The gloves go next, thrown onto their shelf, then Mick’s fingers jam into the fastenings of Chronos’s armor. They twist and pull, Mick muttering all the while, face turned to try and see what he might be caught on.

That it’s Mick’s face that Leonard’s looking at, not Chronos’s makes Leonard feel braver—like some part of this is familiar. Safe. The way Mick acts around him, the way _Chronos_ acts around him, flutters an unacknowledged but familiar feeling within Leonard. It twists around his heart and forces his tongue into motion. “They’re going to find us,” he says quietly. He doesn’t know who he means by “them”, the Time Masters or the crew. 

Leonard’s never really been the sentimental type, but he hopes that the crew isn’t dead.

Mick grunts as his breastplate finally breaks free. “We are hidden within the temporal zone.” He hangs the large piece of futuristic metal on an arrangement of hooks, suspending it in the center of the extended panel.

Leonard turns to face him a little more fully. With each piece, Mick seems more and more Mick and less Chronos. “I seem to remember you finding the Waverider there.”

“I am much better at hiding than Rip Hunter.” Chronos pulls a few straps along his chest, letting them slide loose. “Do not hold out hope for your friends. I sabotaged their ship before bringing you here.” Bending down, Chronos starts to separate out the plates that make up his bracers from his boots. “They died long ago.” Leonard’s surprised by the pang of loss he feels by that. It’s hard and sudden, gripping his chest painfully, and he shoves it away. He doesn’t need it and there’s no reason to believe Mick about it anyway. A little ‘sabotage’ means nothing. How many times has someone thought that they’d finally managed to kill Leonard only for Leonard to have found the multiple flaws in their plan? The hidden panel just within reach of the gate, the backdoor exit that Leonard had found buried behind a stack of pallets, the half-forgotten lake in the woods? Mick hangs up the last of Chronos’s armor and straightens. The panel slides back into place, lines disappearing as if it had never existed. “No one will find us here,” he says.

Leonard’s heart cracks because without the armor, he can almost fool himself into thinking that it’s the old Mick standing in front of him. “Are your new masters included in that?” Leonard asks. He waits for Mick to respond, listening to the tone of buttons as Mick sets another hidden lock. “Are they okay with you taking a sabbatical?” 

Mick doesn’t answer and Leonard takes it as confirmation of his suspicions. The Time Masters are going to be pissed when they find out that their favorite operative has taken a leave of absence without telling them. Or maybe they won’t care if Mick is right and he really did take care of Rip. “You should eat,” Mick says. 

Leonard frowns at the protein bar still sitting on the bed. He’s stills sure that it would taste about as tasty as cardboard. “Like I said before, I’ll pass.”

Mick grunts and presses another button that echoes a tone on his wristband, then strides over to Leonard, his boots quiet on the metal alloy floor. A trickle of fear whispers along Leonard’s limbs. He ignores it, holding himself in place until Mick kneels on the bed with him. Mick leans forward, his expression decidedly un-Mick like, eyes cold and indifferent, and Leonard leans away, flattening himself against the wall again as the dam of his bravery breaks. Mick pauses, face blank, then pulls back a few inches, giving Leonard a little bit of space. He grabs up the protein bar and opens it. Breaking off a piece, he offers it to Leonard. “Eat,” he says flatly. Pride forces Leonard’s chin up, tilting it defiantly. He’s not going to repeat himself. If this is the one thing that he gets to control, then so be it. He keeps his lips stubbornly closed as Mick places the piece directly against them. “ _Eat_.” Leonard turns his head to the side. Mick grunts and grabs Leonard’s jaw with one hand, forcing him back into place. Humiliation seeps in alongside the fear from earlier, denting Leonard’s resolve. “Eat or this gets unpleasant.” 

There’s a lot of ways that the situation could get worse, Leonard knows. He’s lived some of them—and there’s nothing that he could do to stop any of it. It’s that thought that finally parts his lips and allows him to hold still while Mick puts the broken piece into his mouth. “Good,” Mick says, verbally praising Leonard like an obedient dog and breaks off another piece while Leonard hurriedly chews and swallows the dry as dust food. It tastes just about how he expected it to. When Mick holds out the next piece, Leonard turns his head to the side and hurriedly says, “I need to use the head.” Mick frowns at him. “I’m human.” He lets himself shift irritably, giving in to the sensation of his full bladder.

Hunger aches dully inside Leonard but he punches it back down. He’s not letting Chronos feed him—Mick’s hands or not—and he has a better chance at gaining an upper hand by getting himself off the bed than he does sitting around like a mindless doll. And it’s not like Mick showing him to the toilet won’t take care of at least one of Leonard’s more pressing problems.

Leonard inhales sharply as Mick’s thumb brushes along his cheek, swiping just under the earlier wound he’d doctored. When Leonard passes inspection again, Mick jerks Leonard’s arms forward roughly. He punches two buttons on his wristband, then manipulates a previously unseen snap on the underside of the cuffs. They break apart and Leonard has a brief moment of freedom before Mick spins him and yanks his arms behind his back to refasten the cuffs. Leonard rests his head against the wall and grits his teeth. He thinks he likes this even less than he did the earlier position. 

The cuffs are as solid as they were before when Leonard tests them again. “Where am I going to go?” he asks. “I have no idea how to pilot the ship and from what I hear, it’s pretty cold outside.”

Mick drags him backward on the bed, pulling him tight against Mick’s chest. Leonard gasps at the unexpected contact, warm against his back. “Insurance,” Mick growls. He shakes Leonard’s cuffs, testing them himself, and slides his fingers along the seam where they meet Leonard’s wrists. As if he loses himself for a moment, Mick repeats the motion, slowly tracing the contours of Leonard’s hands.

Taking a calculated risk, Len leans back against Mick, letting his shoulders relax and turning his face towards Mick’s. Mick is warm and solid against him, holding him upright and it’s familiar enough to make Len’s heart throb. Mick studies Leonard’s face for a few long moments, expression unreadable before dragging Leonard off the bed.

Leonard stumbles before finding his feet, Mick’s strong grip the only thing keeping him from the floor. “Easy,” Leonard hisses and Mick shoves him upright.

Together, they march forward, Leonard awkwardly attempting to walk as Mick keeps a firm hold on the cuffs, using it to steer him. Mick jerks Leonard to the left and Leonard stumbles again. A panel dings open, revealing a private bath, outfitted the same as the Waverider, with its futuristic toilet and plastic-lined shower. Mick pushes Leonard into the room, uncaring as Leonard’s shoes catch along the edge of tile and Leonard yanks himself away, putting a little space between them. He glares back at Mick who looks at him impassively and Leonard bites back the words that he wants to say. He doubts that they would get a rise out of Mick anyway, and that’s worse than not saying them at all.

Leonard steps up to the toilet and looks down at the oddly-shaped bowl before he fully realizes his predicament. He huffs and looks back over at Mick. “If you wouldn’t mind.” He shakes his restraints. Mick grunts, bops his two buttons again and pulls off the cuffs. He moves to snap them around Leonard’s wrists again, this time in front once more, but Leonard slips away, having had just about his fill. When Mick steps forward, Leonard holds his hands up defensively. “For fuck’s sake, I just need to pee. Where am I going to go? Where?” He glances around the room, at the pitifully small vent and the sealed corners and absolute lack of windows—not that they would be the best idea in a fucking _spaceship_.

Mick frowns but moves back to the door. And then stays, standing just in front of the doorway. Leonard lifts an eyebrow. “A little privacy?” he asks icily.

“No.”

 _What?_ , Leonard thinks, but Mick stands there like he fully intends to watch the entire process, eyes narrowed like he’s focused, and it unsettles Leonard enough that he simply spins around and places himself in front of the toilet. It won’t be the first time that Mick has seen him pee, but it will be the first time that he’s ever done it with that calculating look as if Leonard were some kind of lab experiment. Leonard swallows the little bit of uncertainty and unzips his jeans. He blanks his mind of everything except the need for relief and lets himself go. He moans and steadies himself against the wall. _Christ_ , he had to go—and the noise was pretty embarrassing. He bites his lip to stifle any other involuntary sounds and slants his eyes over to where Mick is still staring at him like it’s fascinating watching Leonard take a piss. Leonard doesn’t even want to think about what that means.

Finishing up, Leonard gives himself a few shakes, but he pauses when he reaches for his zipper. The shower is only a few steps to his right and he can still feel the sweat of the previous battle and the cold gun’s residue chilling his skin. Even with the water restrictions, it would be a definite improvement of his current situation.

Mick’s hand clamps onto Leonard’s arm, tugging him backward but Leonard counters, throwing his weight forward and breaking the hold. He doesn’t pause, just runs straight into the shower and turns, putting his back to the wall as Mick snarls. Leonard holds his hands up again and tilts his head. “How about you watch this, too?” he offers, his voice low and soft. Mick freezes in mid-lunge, eyes travelling down Leonard’s body and back up before stopping at his crotch. A small flush stains Leonard’s cheeks, knowing that his dick is still hanging out, and he fights against the urge to cover it. “Ten minutes,” he bargains. “That’s all I need.” 

Leonard pushes his coat off his shoulders, watches as Mick slowly straightens again. There’s something a little more Mick and a little less Chronos about Mick’s expression, a tinge of heat lighting up his eyes and it thaws a little of the ice in Leonard’s chest. He strips off both of his shirts and tosses them and the coat out onto the floor, then waits, his hands gripping the waistband of his jeans. “Ten minutes,” he whispers. Mick nods, chest rising and falling with a long, hard breath. Returning the nod, Leonard kneels to undo his boots, then pushes his jeans down and his boxers. He kicks them out of the shower too and allows himself to stand naked and vulnerable in front of the heated eyes of not-quite Mick. Somewhere deep inside of him, arousal stirs.

With a sharp intake of air, Leonard spins and places himself under the shower head. He slides the door shut, but it’s stopped and it’s course reversed by one of Mick’s big hands. “The floor’s going to get wet,” Leonard tells him, his voice calm even as his heart flutters wildly. Mick doesn’t respond and Leonard turns back to the controls. “I don’t care if you don’t.” He presses the button for the first gush of water, inching up the temperature and shudders at the how his body warms under the spray. Water sluices down his body and Leonard follows it with his hands, tracing the warmth before it fades. He scrubs his palm over his head, rinsing away what remains of the water, then pumps his hand on the soap dispenser and lets it fill his palm. He can still feel Mick watching him, can still feel the heat of him, but he keeps himself focused on the task at hand, unable to predict if Mick will allow him however long he needs or if he will drag Leonard out after the ten minutes whether he is finished or not. He smoothes the soap over his chest and down his torso, gives his cock a cursory swipe and then bends to soap up his legs, scrubbing away the residual stiffness. 

Hands slide along Leonard’s hips and Leonard snaps upright, whirling to get a glimpse of Mick’s strained face before his lips are being crushed underneath the hot demanding feel of Mick’s mouth. Warmth presses along Leonard’s hip, a hard ridge digging into him as Mick grinds forward. Leonard frees his trapped left arm and turns himself more fully to press himself against Mick’s solid body. He grips Mick’s jaw and takes control of the kiss, tongue and lips gentle and coaxing as Mick groans.

Mick presses him backward, his shoulders hitting the wall, and another quick few gushes of water cover them, rinsing away soap and soaking Mick’s shirt. Leonard shakes his head, spraying water, and Mick steps back to strip off his shirt before coming back in. He kisses Leonard again, mouth opening and tongue flicking out and Leonard responds, but only absently, because he’s caught on the fact that Mick’s chest is absolutely smooth. Leonard runs his hands over Mick’s scarless shoulders and down to where thick burn marks used to cover his chest. He breaks his mouth away from Mick’s and stares as Mick directs his attention to Leonard’s neck, kissing and sucking on the sensitive skin under his jaw. Leonard trails his fingers down Mick’s back and feels nothing but more smooth skin and smothers another surge of panic.

What had the Time Masters _done_? Either they had healed Mick completely, far beyond even Gideon’s abilities, or this was, indeed, a clone and not Mick standing in front of Leonard. Big hands slide down Leonard’s back to cup his ass, diverting his attention, and Leonard pushes his hips forward, rubbing himself against a hard thigh. It feels good, same as it’s ever been with Mick.

Closing his eyes and burying his encroaching panic, Leonard reaches down and grabs the hard cock that is poking his thigh, giving it a long, hard stroke. “Mick,” he whispers, desperate to pretend, let himself believe that it is some time in the recent past and not the here and now, that it’s any one of the hundreds of memories that Leonard has of Mick.

He’s shoved backward, nearly bouncing off the wall, and has to catch himself before he falls to the floor. His hands squeak along the wet sides of the shower and he glances at Mick’s face to see the previous warmth drain out of it, replaced with cold fury. Mick’s lips tighten into a snarl and his hand pulls back. 

Leonard catches Mick’s hand before it has a chance to land, his own anger rising, surging past the arousal and the residual fear. “ _Don’t_ you hit me,” he snarls, tossing the hand back at the man in front of him. Mick, Chronos, or fucking Santa Claus, _no one_ gets to hit Leonard for free. Not anymore. Mick—fucking Chronos—stares at Leonard, shocked into inactivity and a blank expression, long seconds ticking between them. Then he turns and leaves, exiting the shower and the room, and Leonard’s left naked and alone in the shower, heart pounding.

Leonard sags against the far wall, sending another small gush of water cascading over him as he takes a few deep breaths. “What the _hell_?” Leonard mutters, unsure of what part of that situation he means, other than all of it. What triggered Mick’s little temper tantrum, Leonard has no idea, but Leonard doesn’t know if he’s more worried about that or the absence of Mick’s scars. “Fuck.” He carefully pushes himself upright again and forces the tremble in his limbs to cease. 

Steady again, Leonard steps out of the shower and lets himself drip onto the floor as small jets of air quickly dry him. The room is as sealed as ever, no other way out than back into his previous makeshift prison cell. And just like in his little cell, Mick seemingly hasn’t allowed himself any comforts here either, nothing in the room besides the standard issue. Probably some kind of Time Master coding because Mick had always been a guy who’d liked _stuff_ —collecting it, storing it, just having it around him. It’s yet another glaring example of how the Time Masters have fucked with Leonard’s partner, twisted him into another person entirely. Fucking bastards. Steeling himself, Leonard grabs his underwear and jeans and slides them back on, ignoring the stiffness of the fabric. He puts his shirts on one by one, adding each layer like another piece of armor, readying himself for whatever awaits him outside of the room.

When he’s as put together as he can be, Leonard moves to follow Chronos back out into the bedroom. What choice does he have? Stay in the bathroom until Mick comes and drags him out? Either way, he’s going to end up back in the room and he might as well do it on his own terms. Head held high, Leonard steps back out into the main room.

And finds absolutely nothing waiting for him. Leonard peers from side to side but finds no trace of Mick or his brainwashed rage issues. Well, fuck, Leonard thinks, and starts checking every square inch of wall he can to try and find an escape route.

* * *

An hour later, Leonard comes to the conclusion that the door must be, like everything else, keyed to Mick or his little secret decoder band and Leonard’s stuck. He’s tried every phrase he could think of, approached the door a hundred different ways, and ran his hands all along the jamb and surrounding wall and come up with a total of jack and shit.

The ship is still refusing to talk to him as well and Leonard wonders if it just doesn’t like him or if Mick had deactivated it. He’d always been a bit freaked out by Gideon.

The door firmly shut and the computer not responding, Leonard had busied himself along the walls. He’d run his hands along the sides, past panels that he’d seen Mick manipulate, but couldn’t even find the edge of the damn things anymore.

Two hours after that finds Leonard flat on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, stomach growling despite the empty wrapper of the protein bar that Mick had tried to feed him beside his head. In the absence of anything else to do, he’s been running theories in his head and the only thing that’s decided on is that he has been exposed to entirely too much science-fiction. Futuristic healing and brainwashing techniques, cloning, alternate realities, past-selves and time remnants—it’s all too much to even comprehend. Leonard’s head hurts with the possibilities.

A soft whoosh announces that Leonard is no longer alone and Leonard pushes himself up on his elbows to watch Mick stride in. Mick found a shirt somewhere, Leonard notes, a black sweater of some kind. With Mick now dearmored and Leonard himself free of restraints, it almost feels normal—their kind of normal at any rate—like maybe they’re on the Waverider during a bit of downtime. “Where have you been?” Leonard demands, feeling irritable and generally pissed off that he’s been left to stew for so long. If the man’s not trying to molest him or smack him around, he’s disappearing for hours and Leonard hates that nothing on this damn ship is within his control.

Mick stares at him with that blank look that Leonard’s beginning to think that the Time Masters surgically applied to his face during their reformatting of his personality. “On the bridge,” he replies. He takes a step towards the bed and Leonard finds that his courage deserts him with a small shot of fear pulsing through his anger. Leonard’s up off the bed in a shot, skittering a few feet away from it, because he might be quite a few years from sixteen, but that same kid still lives somewhere deep in Leonard and both of them know how dangerous beds can be. He comes to a stop near the far middle of the room while Mick scowls at him. Leonard forces his breathing to slow and acts as if that he had chosen to get up of his own volition. Of course he’d meant to get up. It had nothing to do with Mick at all. He’d simply wanted to inspect the blank wall that he is now standing by. Mick doesn’t buy it for a second, but Leonard would have been disappointed if he had.

Growling lowly, Mick stalks past him to the nightstand and tosses down the tablet that he’d taken earlier, its black screen reflecting the overhead lights. With Mick’s back turned and the door free, Leonard oh so casually strolls towards the entrance and tries to operate it one more time. Not even a twitch. He turns back and finds Mick glaring again and gives him a shrug. “Had to,” he says because, really, what kind of master thief would he be allowing himself to remain trapped if he had a clear escape route? He leans against the room’s simple table and pretends that he’s not bothered by the idea of being trapped.

Mick tosses another protein bar his way and Leonard catches it out of sheer reflex. Leonard holds his new prize out and grimaces. “Do you seriously live on these things?” Back on the Waverider, Mick wouldn’t touch the things and here he is doling them out like they’re Twinkies.

“They’re sufficient,” Mick tells him.

“Sufficient?” Leonard mocks, tossing the bar back to him. “Sufficient is _prison food._ Sufficient is living on ramen noodles for two months hiding out from the fucking Ruskies.” If Leonard ever sees another brightly colored square package of noodles again, it will be too soon. “Fuck, Mick. You might as well just up and die if _sufficient_ is all you have to look forward to, isn’t that how you’ve always felt?” Mick has always been one for food and Leonard can’t even comprehend a Mick that would settle for merely sustaining himself if he had other choices. He’s always loved to eat, loved to try different things and Leonard has eaten so many damn dishes just because Mick wanted to experiment that he’s lost count. It’s as if the Time Masters have taken everything that made up Mick and ripped it out of him. Guilt and anger pulse in equal amounts through Leonard and he scowls. If he ever gets his hands on those Time Bastards, he’ll see how they like having everything they’re ever stood for taken from them. In the meantime, Mick is right in front of him, not even knowing what he was missing. “Don’t try to tell me you can’t get anything else,” Leonard says. “I’ve seen the Waverider do at least a little better. Live a little.”

“Fine,” Mick snarls and throws the protein bar down. He stomps past Leonard and out of the room, long legs and anger eating up the distance. The door clicks shut again.

Leonard stares at the closed door and slowly straightens from his slouch. He hadn’t heard Mick lock it, but then again, he hadn’t heard Mick _unlock_ it either, and maybe he’s been thinking about this all wrong. Some doors in the Waverider had been coded to DNA signatures. He cautiously approaches the door again, waving his hand when it stays shut. 

A ding startles Leonard and he jumps back, nearly tripping over a swivel chair bolted to the floor. A few beeps follow and a sound akin to a CD whirring. Leonard glances around the room, wondering what he’s accidentally triggered, but sees nothing out of the ordinary. A voice intones through the room, making him jump again. “Gamliel system is fully online.” It sounds suspiciously close to Gideon.

“Gamliel?” Leonard tries.

“Male,” the voice replies. “Terrestrian. Approximate age early to mid-forties. Unknown heritage. Gauged to be from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Abusive childhood.”

“Excuse me?” Leonard demands. He could understand most of the details but what the fuck about him said ‘abusive childhood’?

“Leonard Snart,” Gamliel continues, like it’s cataloging him. “Criminal from Central City, thief, born to Lewis and Layla Snart in 1972. Younger sibling Lisa Snart, born 1982. Known associates, Mick Rory, born 1970. Also known as Chr—”

“Enough,” Mick snarls, striding back into the room. “Machine talks too much. Dinner.” He snaps at the table and slams himself down into a chair.

“Certainly,” Gamliel replies. “What would you like? I have 35 different meals preprogrammed—”

“Anything.” Mick scowls up at Leonard and points at the chair opposite him. “Sit.” And Leonard does. It’s the most of _Mick_ that Leonard’s seen since leaving him in the forest and Leonard finds himself eager to see more.

Another hidden panel opens to reveal two steaming hot plates. Mick grabs one and shoves it at Leonard. “Will that do?” He pauses and then adds a “Princess?”

A smile ghosts over Leonard’s lips. That wasn’t something that Chronos would have said. It was all Mick, whether Mick would admit to it or not. Leonard glances down at the plate in front of him, eyebrows rising when he sees a steak and fries. “Could do with some ketchup,” he says, cautiously pushing a little bit more.

Mick scowls harder as the computer replies, “Sorry, Mr. Snart. I seem to be out of that ingredient.”

Mick shrugs at Leonard’s amused look. “Been awhile since I’ve been able to stock up.”

“I suppose,” Leonard says and picks up the knife and fork that had materialized with the plate.

“I scanned the menus of restaurants that Leonard Snart and Mick Rory were known to frequent before their disappearance in 2016. Unfortunately, most seemed to promote a liquid diet, or one given to a high level of grease. Since the Health Conscious Foods Act of 2076, upheld by the Time Master Codex, I have been unable to—”

“Shut it,” Mick growls.

Leonard smirks at his plate as he cuts into the steak. He pops the first bite into his mouth and chews. Damned if it doesn’t taste like the cheap steak that Saints and Sinners serve back in Central, charred just a bit too much and all. He glances up to tell Mick of the uncanny similarity to find staring at him again, an eerie look of studious fascination on his face. Leonard drops his eyes back to the plate. “What?” he asks, quietly. He doesn’t want to ruin the moment, but he thinks that he’s finally figured out what bothers him about Mick’s new habit of staring. The way that Mick seems to look at him, it’s as if Mick has forgotten what it means to be human. The simplest things seem to catch him.

He acts like he needs Leonard to remind him.

Mick looks away sharply, leaving the question unanswered. He stands and walks away, heading back to the panel that he stored his suit in hours ago. Leonard jumps up and follows him, catching his arm before he gets to the panel. He doesn’t want Mick to put the suit on again. He thinks that Mick might just disappear in it, never to be seen again if he does. “Mick—”

“ _Chronos_ ,” Mick growls, shaking Leonard off.

Leonard shakes his head. “ _Mick_ ,” he repeats. “Your name is Mick Rory and you know it.” Mick stares ahead at the still locked panel. “ _Remember._ ”

“Careful,” Mick rumbles, finally turning to face him. His eyebrows furl. “Think about what you’re asking me to remember, _Snart_.” His hands seize Leonard arms, clamping down tightly. “Would you like me to remember how you betrayed your partner? How you left him to die? How you chose your little band of do-gooders over him?” His voice gets progressively louder until it’s a shout echoing in Leonard’s ears. “Is that what you’d like me to remember? How much I want to _hurt_ you? Make you suffer like you made me?”

Leonard’s heart drops somewhere down around his knees. “Fuck, Mick, I’m—”

“Don’t you fucking say you’re sorry. Don’t you dare apologize. Not to me. Not to the man that you killed.”

“Mick, I didn’t—”

“No, that’s right. You didn’t have the _guts_ ,” Mick snarls. He spins them around and slams Leonard against the wall. “You just left me to die instead. Much better, right? Hero-approved.”

“I was coming back!” Leonard snaps. It sounds as empty and useless out loud as it did in his head. “That was the plan!”

“Ah, and how did that plan work out? You should have killed me.”

Tears threaten to spill from Leonard’s eyes but he holds them back with sheer pride. “No,” he says. “No, Mick—”

“I should have killed _you_! Why are you here?” It’s the same question that Mick’s thrown at him before, this time twice as loud.

“I don’t know!” Leonard shouts back. “Why am I here? Why didn’t you kill me?” 

“I don’t know!” Mick’s roar echoes through the room, bouncing off the walls and coming back again and again until Leonard feels his knees start to shake.

“Christ, Mick,” he says softly and Mick kisses him hard, lust and anger combining into passion. Mick’s lips are hard and bruising, pulling back to reveal sharp teeth that bite down and pull. Leonard shudders and fists his hands in Mick’s shirt, pulling him in closer even though he should be pushing the other way. Mick breaks away and changes the angle, moving back in to push his tongue in deep, licking at the inside of Leonard’s mouth. Leonard rolls his hips against Mick’s, groans when Mick mimics the motion. He drops his hands down to the waistband of Mick’s pants, letting his fingers slip just above to touch Mick’s hot skin. Mick does the same, but moves his hands farther upward, skating underneath Leonard’s layers of shirts to skim along his stomach. Leonard catches it before it gets too far, holding it tight against himself. He rests his head against Mick’s shoulder and pants. “Maybe we should—” _move to the bed_ , he wants to say, but he doesn’t get the chance.

Mick’s hands drop away. “You should eat,” Mick states tonelessly as that flat look slams back down, hiding Mick behind the blank walls of Chronos.

Leonard bangs a fist against Mick’s chest, as if he might be able to batter down the wall and bring Mick back. “Fuck you!” he spits, the heat of his anger breaking through any control he might have before he can rein it back in. He steels his jaw and braces for a returning blow, but, for once, it doesn’t come. Mick—Chronos—merely steps away, no anger, no threat. He stares for a few moments and then heads for the door. “Mick!”

Mick pauses at the door. “I will be back in a few hours,” he says, tossing the words over his shoulder. “You should eat.” He leaves again, the door sliding closed behind him.

The knife that Leonard throws bounces off the smooth alloy and clatters to the floor.

* * *

Leonard’s tempted to leave the food out of spite but he’s not that stupid. There’s more time and energy for spitefulness when one is well-fed, after all, and there’s no reason for him to turn down a steak dinner, replicated, healthy-substituted bar food or not. He eats the steak and the fries and half of Mick’s as well because it serves Mick right. Mick loves fries—well, at least he did before the Time Masters scrambled his brain—and each one tastes a little like revenge: satisfying but ultimately empty. They’re not actually fries, he finds, but most likely as close as Gamliel’s highly regulated processes can make them. Health food: the wave of the future.

Disgusted at himself, Leonard paces the floor, once again taking a full inventory of the room. Bed, nightstand, table, bolted down chairs and an endless multitude of hidden panels that Leonard can’t access. He picks up the tablet and finds that it too is apparently keyed to Mick or else he’s being incredibly obtuse because he can’t figure out how to power it on. He throws it back onto the stand with a sigh. Around him, the lights slowly dim, tied to a daily cycle. Night time, apparently.

Once again, Leonard’s left alone with his thoughts and these days they’re never pretty. He’s back to wondering if any of the crew made it out alive, if he’ll ever see them again, and how long he’s been held on Chronos’s ship. He wonders what Mick plans to do with him, if Mick has any idea at all, because Leonard’s beginning to doubt that. Mick seems confused as to what he wants and once again, Leonard thinks that the blame for that could lie precisely on the Time Masters’ doorstep.

Fuck them.

In the dim twilight of the room, Leonard is plotting how best to show the Time Masters his appreciation if he ever gets the chance when Mick finally comes back. Leonard turns as Mick strides purposefully towards him. “How nice of you to join me—“ he starts and then stops, flinching involuntarily when Mick grabs him. He digs in his heels, making himself sheer deadweight when Mick tries to drag him to the side of the room—towards the bed. “No,” Leonard says and means it with every fiber of his being. No, he does not want to go to the bed with Mick, not with Mick still fucked in the head. “ _No_ , Mick.”

Mick doesn’t give him a choice. With a growl, Mick spins him, knocking him off balance and sending him stumbling to the side. Leonard tries to get his feet back underneath of him but a shove makes him tumble and he lands face first against the bed, knees dropping to the floor. He jerks his head upward with a gasp, already moving to try and get away, but Mick is already on him, yanking his arms backward. Leonard struggles, thrashing from side to side to try and throw Mick off of him. “Fucking— _bastard_ , get off of me!” Mick heaves him upward, tossing him more firmly on the bed.

Leonard rolls, aims an elbow at Mick’s chest, follows it with a fist at his face when it misses. The second blow connects, Mick grunting with the impact, head snapping to the side, and Leonard pulls back to do it again when a heavy cuff snaps around his wrist. Ice water floods his veins. “I said ‘no’!” he shouts, kicking as Mick drags him upward. One foot rebounds off Mick’s shin, the other a thigh, while a knee jams into Mick’s side and together it buys him just enough time to scramble to the edge of the bed. He tries to launch himself off of the mattress but Mick catches him and yanks him backward, tossing him back across the expanse of the bed. 

There’s no time for fear, only action. Leonard lands with a bounce and doesn’t hesitate as he comes up swinging. His fist catches nothing but air as Mick rears back and then Mick’s back on top of him, using his heavier body to pin Leonard down. Mick’s legs lock around Leonard’s as he catches Leonard’s cuffed wrist and wrenches it above Leonard’s head. Mick tries for the other arm but Leonard shoves it underneath of himself in an effort to keep it away. He hears the click of the cuffs again and Mick steps back, sliding off of the bed. Leonard goes limp, panting, and lifts his eyes up to his outstretched arm, tries to pull it down and finds it stuck. Mick has cuffed him to the bar above the bed. Leonard closes his mouth with a hard clack of teeth. _Bastard_. A memory of another time, another place, another Leonard flashes through Leonard’s mind and he shoves it back down where it belongs, buried under the rest of the shit that has made up his life.

Mick had always known why Leonard didn’t like restraints. He’d guessed before Leonard had even told him, already respecting that boundary without knowing the why. Chronos doesn’t care. Leonard lashes out, foot snapping towards the man in front of him.

Mick dodges Leonard’s foot, stepping just out of reach, and stands there, out of breath and obviously injured as he looks down at Leonard. If it were the old Mick, Leonard would feel a twinge of sympathy for causing him pain, but this one can jump out the space lock for all he cares right now. They stay there regarding each other a moment, Mick standing and slightly hunched, Leonard sprawled across the bed, before Mick turns and heads to one of his secret panels. “I hope that you’ve got a hospital hidden in one of those,” Leonard tells him. “If you come near me again, you’re going to need one.”

“I’ll remember that.” Mick hisses, fingers pressed against his ribs. He pulls off his shirt digs through the panel to pull out a jar, smearing some of the grease against his skin. He straightens himself and Leonard glares.

“Was I too threatening? Walking around this tiny room with my complete inability to escape?”

“You’re resourceful,” Mick says and Leonard wants to snidely thank him for his faith, unfounded as it is. “You would have figured something out.” He walks over to the table and looks down at the two plates, one empty and one half-empty.

“I ate your fries,” Leonard says, breaking the silence again. “Hope you weren’t hungry.” Mick’s fingers skim over the cold food, hovering just above it like it might be poison before he finally selects a fry and brings it up to his mouth. He pops it in and chews slowly, likely relearning what it feels like to eat something that wasn’t a reconstituted protein. Shrugging, he eats another and then two more, three, until the plate is cleared. He licks the salt from his fingers when he’s done, tongue swirling over his thumb and Leonard shifts on the bed, feeling a prickle of heat in his groin despite himself.

Mick looks over at him, eyes narrowed. “Sleep,” he orders.

Leonard yanks on his cuff, rattling it against the bar. “I’m not a robot, Mick,” he snaps. _Eat, sleep,_ Mick is one step away from putting him in new clothes and posing him on the shelf for later use.

“No.” Mick beep-bop-boops another panel, sliding it open. “You would be better programmed if you were.”

Leonard sneers. “Is that what you want? A robot to follow all of your little orders? Tell me what to do and have me do it so you can watch? Is that what you’re into now?” Voyeuristic tendencies aren’t too out of line for Mick, actually, if Leonard thinks about it. He’s always had a bit of thing for watching—fire, strippers, Leonard, it is all the same, really.

A pillow bounces on the floor, followed by a blanket. “Watch?” Mick mutters. 

“Watch,” Leonard retorts. “Watch me piss, watch me eat. You want to watch me sleep now?”

“How do you know I haven’t already?” Mick says and Leonard’s train of thought derails. Who knows how long Leonard was out cold before he woke up confused on Mick’s ship?

“You…” Leonard trails off, unsure how to finish his sentence. He feels oddly violated.

“Here,” Mick grunts, and tosses the spare pillow onto the bed. He follows it with the blanket. Leonard lets the bedding stay where it lands. Mick blinks at him a few times, then turns and walks out again. The twilight of the room grows darker, holoscreen’s sunset dimming to a faint hue, and Leonard huffs.

“Yeah, good night to you, too.” He kicks the new pillow off the bed and flops backward with a sigh, landing on the bed’s original pillow. “Fuck,” he says quietly into the dark.

* * *

Leonard slips into consciousness as his skin prickles with the certainty that he’s being watched. His eyes flutter open and catch on the faint outline of Mick in the dark, standing just out of reach as he studies Leonard. Leonard groans and buries his face against the pillow. He’d been expecting this but it didn’t mean that he was pleased to wake up to it. “Stop staring.”

Mick’s boots shuffle on the floor, moving away and Leonard scrubs his face, feeling another prickle of guilt. “If you promise to keep your rage to yourself, you can join me,” Leonard mumbles. Mick’s movements pause and Leonard pulls back the sheet in a sleepy invitation. The logical side of him demands to know what he thinks he’s doing, putting forth half-formed arguments about why this might be a bad idea, but the rest of him, the more instinctual part, fueled by thirty years of memories ignores it. This is Mick, after all. “No trying to strangle me when I’m sleeping.”

Leonard holds the blanket up for a few long seconds before Mick finally scuffs his boots and sidles closer. The mattress dips as Mick sits down and Leonard lets the blanket fall. “This isn’t a good idea,” Mick says, giving voice to the part of Leonard that agrees.

“Shut up,” Leonard tells both of them. “I’m trying to sleep.”

Twin thumps accompany Mick’s boots hitting the floor and the bulk of Mick’s body sprawls on the bed, one long wall of heat slipping under Leonard’s blanket. Leonard relaxes, body going boneless and closes his eyes. Having Mick next to him feels right, like Leonard had been missing a piece of himself that had finally come back to him.

Mick’s still watching him, face only a few inches from Leonard’s and Leonard fumbles a hand over Mick’s eyes. “Sleep,” he says, echoing Mick’s earlier order.

And Mick does. Leonard regards him for a moment, watching the steady rise and fall of Mick’s chest and then follows him back under.

* * *

A beep endlessly repeats against Leonard’s ear and Leonard growls. “What the hell?” he mutters, opening his eyes. Behind him, Mick stirs, his body stretching against Leonard’s and his arms tightening into a blatant cuddle, reenacting a familiar morning ritual. Leonard pushes back against Mick, indulging himself in Mick’s affectionate side. Mick’s right hand rubs absently over Leonard’s stomach, fingers against bare skin where Leonard’s clothes have been rucked up, while his other twitches on the pillow next to Leonard’s head. Leonard twists and glares at Mick’s wrist, the source of the beeping. “What is that?” he asks, blurry mind wondering when Mick had taken to wearing a watch before reality finally catches up to him.

Mick jerks awake, then rips himself away, dumping Leonard forward as he leaps off the bed. “Jesus!” Leonard snarls into the mattress and rolls himself onto his other side. Mick stares down at him, eyebrows up and mouth open—looking almost terrified. Well, fuck, Leonard thinks. That’s different. And kind of interesting. Casually, Leonard trails his eyes down Mick’s body, sliding over the clean lines to where Mick’s cock tents at his crotch. In little more than a thin shirt and underwear, Mick looks far enough removed from Chronos as to be in another zip code entirely. Leonard approves.

A smirk crossing his face, Leonard reaches out and lightly trails the fingers of his free hand over Mick’s cock. Mick shudders, his face losing some of its fear and tension. Better.

The beeping continues, interrupting them and Mick stops it with a poke of a button on his wrist. “Sir,” Mick says, sounding cold and armored despite the fact that he’s still standing in front of Leonard, sleep-rumpled and touchable, pushing against the lazy hand that Leonard has on his dick. Leonard strokes gently upward, wanting to crack the alien ice coating Mick’s voice. Mick is supposed to be a raging fire, his voice rough with the burn.

“Mission report,” a harsh voice barks from the speaker.

Mick stiffens, steel slamming into his backbone, and he moves out of Leonard’s reach. “Still in progress,” he replies. He glances down at Leonard and then turns around. Leonard watches as the lines of Mick’s back tense.

“Liar,” the voice hisses. “Report back to the Vanishing Point immediately.”

“Sir,” Gamliel chimes, “I am being given orders to return to the Vanishing Point. Shall I change course?”

Mick stares at his wristband and then at Leonard, still sprawled on the bed. “No.”

“Sir—”

“I said, no!” Mick rips at the wristband, wrenching open the snap. “Take us in deeper into the green.”

“Yes, sir,” Gamliel replies, sounding like it doesn’t care either way, even as Leonard stares at Mick.

“Fucking—” Mick frees himself from the band and stomps to another of his hidden panels. It opens with a chirp and Mick tosses the band inside. The panel whirs and crunches as Mick braces himself against the wall, gazing down into the small opening. “Why did I just do that?” he mutters wonderingly.

Leonard sits up, sheet falling to his waist, and Mick snaps his head towards him. “Why did I just do that?” He looks at Leonard like Leonard has all of the answers of the universe.

Leonard studies him for a moment and cocks his head, words and theories spinning through his mind. “Because you’re not their puppet,” he says finally, heart thudding in his chest. “And no one tells Mick Rory and Leonard Snart what to do.” Absolutely no one.

Mick stumbles forward, his legs seemingly working independently of his brain, moving back to Leonard. “No one tells Mick Rory and Leonard Snart what to do,” he repeats, his voice no more than a whisper.

“No,” Leonard agrees. “We do whatever the hell we want.” His body thrums as he holds out a hand. “Whatever we want, Mick.”

“Whatever we want,” Mick mutters. He pitches forward onto the bed, catching himself on the edge and slowly climbs onto it, moving towards Leonard, his eyes trained on Leonard’s lips.

“Yeah,” Leonard whispers and leans forward to press his mouth against Mick’s. Mick surges forward, lips parting with a groan as he welcomes Leonard’s tongue. Leonard’s free hand grips the back of Mick’s head as the cuff rattles above him, still attached to the bar above the bed. Mick rumbles into Leonard’s mouth and his fingers fumble blindly with the cuff, sliding over metal and skin before finding the latch and pulling it apart. 

Leonard’s arm comes free and he brings it close to his torso, rubbing his sore wrist as his heart sings at the freedom. He kneels upward, giving himself leverage, and Mick moans as Leonard presses him down against the bed. “Len,” Mick whispers, his hands sliding gently over Leonard’s face. A shiver races across Leonard’s spine and he breaks away, panting. Mick trails his hands down Leonard’s neck, over his collarbone, to his chest. “Please, Len…”

That’s Mick, Leonard knows. That’s all Mick. A surge of heat rushes through him and he leans back to strip his shirts off over his head, tossing them across the room. He kisses Mick again, swallowing Mick’s little groaning sounds, and catches Mick’s hands, bringing them back up to his chest. He shudders as Mick’s fingers brush against his nipples, thumb swiping again and again. His hard cock throbs between his legs, aching with the need to touch and be touched. Leonard throws a leg over Mick to straddle him and hisses as his denim-clad dick rubs against Mick’s solid bulk. He pushes Mick’s shirt up, hand remapping the hard lines and ridges of Mick’s torso as he grinds himself downward.

“So fucking beautiful,” Mick mutters. He follows Leonard upward, unwilling to let Leonard go just yet, but subsides with a gentle push to his chest. He blinks up at Leonard, eyes all heated passion and Leonard smiles down at him. It’s only been a matter of days since Leonard left Mick alone in that forest, but it feels like years since he’s seen him.

Leonard is never going to be that stupid again. “You and me,” he says softly. “Just you and me, Mick.”

Mick nods, his teeth sinking into his lip. “Take these off.” His hands flatten over Leonard’s thighs, rubbing against his jeans.

“Yeah?” Leonard asks with a smirk, his fingers already moving to undo his fly.

“Yeah, Lenny. I want…” Mick trails off, watching as the jeans slide down Leonard’s thighs and over his knees, mesmerized. 

“What?” Leonard teases. “What do you want?” He pushes one of Mick’s hands into his underwear, rubbing it against himself. Mick shudders, his eyes closing as his fingers gently stroke over Leonard. Leonard sighs appreciatively and rolls his hips in a tight circle.

Mick’s other hand claws beneath the backside of Leonard’s underwear, cupping his ass and urging him forward. Leonard goes willingly, smirking. “I want…” Mick swallows. “I want you to sit on my face.”

Leonard’s pants fly somewhere towards the vicinity of his shirts, closely followed by his underwear. “Oh, yes,” Leonard purrs and moves himself up until each of his legs are folded on either side of Mick’s head. He gently lowers himself down, gasping as Mick surges up to meet him, hard nose bumping along his balls and hot tongue licking over the sensitive skin.

Leonard braces himself against the wall as Mick’s hands rise to support his back and Mick’s tongue makes it way to his ass. He rocks forward at the first brush of Mick’s tongue against his hole, moans as it traces the rim. His hands slip, dropping him downward, his forehead resting against the cool metal. Mick licks upward, warm and wet, coating Leonard’s hole with spit, and Leonard squirms, a quiet whimper escaping his clenched teeth. “Oh, fuck,” Leonard whispers as Mick plays, soft, teasing flicks of his tongue making Leonard twitch, making him ache. Thumbs press in deep, spreading him for Mick’s tongue. 

Reaching between his legs, Leonard rubs his palm over the top of Mick’s head. “Yeah, Mick,” he sighs. “Fuck…” Warm slickness presses against Leonard’s hole, slipping slowly inside. Leonard’s eyes flutter before shutting entirely and he lowers himself another inch, wanting more. Mick flicks his tongue inside of Leonard, muscle softly conforming as he thrusts upward again and again. Mouth working soundlessly, Leonard gives his dick a firm stroke, striping a bead of precome off the head before sliding his fingers upward along his body. He shudders as he pinches his nipple, rolling the bud between two fingers and flattens his left arm against the wall to bury his face in his elbow, tongue moving mindlessly against his skin as Mick works inside of him.

Fingers slip in beside Mick’s tongue, gently stretching and Leonard gasps, his upper half snapping upright. He pants at the ceiling, hips rocking slowly on top of Mick as he tugs at his nipple. “ _Christ_.” Leonard’s body freezes into place, muscles slowly tightening, and his legs start to tremble. Weak, helpless noises drop from his mouth, but Leonard is only peripherally aware of that he’s making them, completely focused on the feel of Mick licking into him, Mick’s fingers and tongue taking him apart piece by piece. 

A steady ache throbs inside of Leonard, an insistent demand for more. His body hums with it, makes him move. He lifts him off of Mick, kneeling above him. Mick follows him up, hands sliding around Leonard’s thighs to try to bring him back down. “Where you going?” Mick mutters and pushes his tongue back against Leonard’s ass. Leonard groans and shoves Mick’s head down back against the bed. Mick growls. “Get you on your back,” he threatens lowly. “See where you go then.” 

Leonard shudders, caught up in the image of him on the bed, Mick dragging his legs upward and thrusting his tongue in again and again until Leonard begs him to come, unable to do anything else. “Later,” he says. He turns, leaning down to run a sure hand over Mick’s bulging cock. Mick surges upward, hips thrusting against Leonard’s fingers. “Fuck me, Mick,” Leonard breathes. He straddles Mick again, lower, each of Mick’s thrusts hitting against his ass, so close to what Leonard wants. “God, fuck me.” 

Mick moans, sharp and punched out, and he jackhammers against Leonard’s ass. His hands grip Leonard’s thighs, digging in hard enough to bruise, and his eyes close. Then he stills, back arched, mouth open and Leonard feels Mick’s cock pulsing. Mick groans again and falls, dropping back against the bed. “Did you…” Leonard lifts himself away from the spreading wetness. “Did you just come, you bastard?” A bubble of amusement shakes his voice.

Mick tosses an arm over his face, hiding himself away, but there’s no denying the redness of his neck. “You fucking did,” Leonard says with a chuckle. Oh, that’s rich.

“Give me a break, Lenny,” Mick groans. “It’s been years.”

Leonard sobers as the meaning of Mick’s words hit, arousal withering away beneath their weight. _Years_. Fuck. Wanting to fill the growing emptiness inside of himself, Leonard drops onto Mick’s chest, arms pushing under Mick’s shoulders to grip him tightly. He rests his cheek against the warmth of Mick’s chest, feeling the rise and fall of it, listening to Mick’s steady heartbeat as words die in his throat. Christ. What can he say to that? That’s on Leonard. Leonard had left Mick alone and vulnerable and Mick had lost _years_.

Mick’s hand pets Leonard’s head, soft soothing strokes like Leonard’s the one that needs comforting. It’s a sad, pathetic reversal of how things should be. “I am so _damn_ sorry, Mick,” Leonard whispers. He tries to think of something else to say—anything—but there’s nothing. Underneath him, Mick shrugs. “Mick?”

“It’s done, Len,” Mick says, matter-of-fact.

Yes, it is. Leonard swallows. “Never again.” Leonard tightens his hold. “You and me.” If Mick forgives him for this, he’s going to be lucky if Leonard lets him go to the bathroom by himself again. Leonard’s never been the clingy type, but he’s considering surgically attaching himself to Mick’s hip.

A rumbling purr rolls through Mick’s chest. “You and me, Lenny,” he says in agreement and a tension that Leonard hadn’t realized that he’d been holding in his shoulders releases at Mick’s forgiveness.

Leonard nods, rubbing his cheek over Mick’s skin. “You and me.” He shifts upward and catches Mick’s lips in a quick, hard kiss. Him and Mick against the world, together, back to back, until the end of time. That’s what Leonard wants.

* * *

Mick’s hand runs down the naked expanse of Leonard’s back before coming back to repeat the motion. Leonard hums contentedly against Mick’s chest, and he stretches on the bed beside Mick, body sliding over the surprisingly soft sheets. How much time has passed, Leonard has no idea, only the ever-changing holoscreen lets him know that it is passing at all. He wants to stay here forever, but he knows that the outside world is waiting for them. And he and Mick were never meant for sitting still.

“Now what?” Leonard asks.

The sheets rustle as Mick looks down at him, an ‘I don’t know’ frown spreading across Mick’s face. Mick shrugs. “Didn’t think that far,” Mick mutters.

No, he wouldn’t have. Mick’s never been much for thinking past the present. That’s always been Leonard’s job. Leonard shifts upward, leaning over Mick to peer down at him. “Can the Time Masters find us here?”

Mick’s frown deepens as he contemplates the idea. “Possible,” he says. “But not likely.”

“Can they track the ship?” Leonard asks. He’s looking for the catch because life has taught him that nothing ever comes easy. ‘Easy’ is a combination of careful planning and flawless execution. Sometimes there’s a little luck, but ‘easy’ never just happens. Not to him.

“Not in the temporal zone,” Mick replies.

“But?”

Mick sighs. “But we can’t stay here.” He strokes a hand along Leonard’s cheek. “A few weeks. A month at the most.”

“And then?”

“And then the ship needs to refuel. Stock up.”

“And they can track us then.”

Mick nods. “Once we enter regular time again, they’ll be able to see us.”

And there was the catch. They were safe as long as they stayed in the temporal zone, but the moment they tried to do anything else, the Time Masters would be on them. They needed a plan. Leonard takes a moment and flips through the possibilities in his mind. He grimaces at the few that stand out, knowing that Mick won’t like them. Leonard rubs his palm on Mick’s chest, like he can maybe ease the suggestion. “We need to go back to 1958.”

Mick’s eyes narrow and Leonard tenses, readying for a fight. “What’s in 1958?”

“You know what,” Leonard says. “It’s the last place we saw any of them.”

“What happened to ‘you and me’?” Mick snarls, anger boiling over. He rolls them, putting Leonard on his back, slamming him down and climbing on top.

“Mick—”

“Don’t you ‘Mick’ me!” Mick shoves at Leonard’s shoulders, pressing him into the bed. “Just another one of your broken promises, huh, Lenny? Just another pretty thing dropping out of your mouth to fool dumbshits like me.”

Leonard grabs Mick’s wrists. “I meant it!” he shouts. “I fucking _meant_ it, Mick. You and me against the world. _Together_ , Mick. Don’t you fucking say that I didn’t mean that.” Mick growls and Leonard twists, rolling them to the other side, putting himself on top. Mick glowers up at him. “But that’s not going to be an option unless we take care of the Time Bastards. You said so yourself.” Mick’s glower falters, his lip lifting as he plays back the earlier conversation. Leonard nods at him. “We _need_ them, Mick. If they’re still alive, we need them because like it or not, they’re our best option for getting out of this alive. Getting out of this _together_.”

“Hunter—”

“Forget Rip’s quest. Forget Vandal Savage.” Leonard shoves himself upright and throws his hands wide. “This is about some jackasses at the end of time fucking with our lives, fucking with _you_ , and no one gets away with that! _No one_ , Mick. I’ll blow all of them back to whatever bad Sci-Fi movie they crawled out of for thinking that they could touch you.” Leonard pants, anger burning away his air as it thrums through him. Mick is _his_ and no one else’s and he’ll kill whoever he needs to if it comes to that.

Mick stares at him for a moment before lunging upward, arms wrapping around Leonard and lips slamming against Leonard’s own. “Fuck, you’re beautiful,” Mick growls, forcing Leonard backward. He kisses Leonard again, hard and possessive. “Fucking love you.” Leonard moans, pressing himself more into the kiss, wanting to put all of himself inside of Mick.

When they finally break apart again, Leonard smoothes his hands over Mick’s head, holding it on either side. “I love you too,” he confesses. He drops his forehead against Mick’s and lets himself soak up the heat of Mick’s body. “I love you too.”

Mick sighs. “So, 1958, huh?”

Leonard nods, his head rolling with Mick’s. “1958. Sara’s there.”

“I like Sara,” Mick rumbles and Leonard huffs a laugh.

“I know you do. She can kick your ass.” Mick had a certain fondness for anyone that could lay him out flat. “Ray’s there, too.”

“Mmm. Haircut.” Mick face twists into a sneer.

“Genius,” Leonard tells him. “Naïve idiot, but a genius.” Mick shrugs, but Leonard can see that he acknowledges the point. “And Kendra.”

“A hawk girl.”

Leonard shrugs. “She has her moments.” 

"She hates me."

"She'll have to get used to it," Leonard replies. "Or we'll drop her back off in 2016." It's a start at any rate. Leonard would rather have Hunter, Stein and Jax with them, too, but he’ll take what he can get. He’s an expert at improvising. And maybe, just maybe, with good planning, things could work out. “1958,” Leonard says. “Set a course.”

Mick rumbles in assent and kisses Leonard one more time. Leonard melts into it, surrendering himself to Mick in a way that he never would have done for Chronos, never would do for anyone else in the world. 

Him and Mick. Together.


End file.
